Old laptop with internal hard drive I formatted, how do I install Linux?

[Rexem2017]

Hi everyone,

I have an Asus laptop (X551M) that had unreadable data on it so I formatted the hard drive, so now I have nothing on the drive.

How can I install Linux (preferrably Ubuntu) on this system?

I tried booting from USB, but it just gives me the ASUS loading screen with the Intel logo in the corner for a second, then a blank screen, and then the loading screen, over and over again.

Am I doing something wrong?

[Sauron]

Check in the manual what the boot menu key is, then spam it at startup to summon the boot menu (usually it's f12 or f8). From there you should be able to select the pendrive.

[Rexem2017]

9 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Check in the manual what the boot menu key is, then spam it at startup to summon the boot menu (usually it's f12 or f8). From there you should be able to select the pendrive.

Do you mean BIOS or something else?

 

[pipnina]

Just now, Sauron said:

Check in the manual what the boot menu key is, then spam it at startup to summon the boot menu (usually it's f12 or f8). From there you should be able to select the pendrive.

This. If the boot menu won't show. Try spamming either F2 or DEL. Since those are the most likely to bring up BIOS menus, where you can set boot orders manually.

 

Also @Rexem2017 have fun with Linux.

[pipnina]

39 minutes ago, Rexem2017 said:

Do you mean BIOS or something else?

 

Boot menu is just the menu which shows you bootable drive options. BIOS lets you edit other system settings including boot order. Either will work as long as it recognizes the USB as a bootable device.

[Linux_User_Greg]

I had a similar issue when installing Linux on an older machine. Some BIOS don't support usb booting if the laptop has a cdrom try putting the installer on a cd and boot from it. If that doesn't work than what I ended up doing in my case is installing it from the network installer that can be downloaded here : https://www.ubuntu.com/download/alternative-downloads. You need to put it directly on your hdd/ssd with the use of an external dock or by hooking it up directly inside in another PC if you don't have an external bay. You can then install Ubuntu or a number of other Linux distos from the network installer.

 

 

[NinJake]

Yep for whatever reason one of my laptops would not install Mint via USB. Moment I plugged in an external dvd drive with the Mint ISO burned to it, it installed right away.